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The Kids Are (More) Pro-Life; Samnesty’s Chances

And he [Brownback] says the youngest voters, ages 18 to 25, are the most pro-life cohort. They were born, he says, when abortion rates were highest, so “many of them feel they’re the survivors of a holocaust: one in four of their compatriots are not here.” Actually, almost one in three: the abortion rate peaked in […]

And he [Brownback] says the youngest voters, ages 18 to 25, are the most pro-life cohort. They were born, he says, when abortion rates were highest, so “many of them feel they’re the survivors of a holocaust: one in four of their compatriots are not here.” Actually, almost one in three: the abortion rate peaked in 1983 at 30.4 percent. ~George Will, Newsweek (June 2005)

I came across this old article during a search, and this remark about Americans born just after I was (1979) really struck me.  I am skeptical that my generation is the most pro-life group because we feel we “survived a holocaust,” since most of us would not have been aware of this for most of our lives until very recently at best.  Presumably, the reason why people born in the late ’70s and early ’80s are more pro-life than their elders is that we are the first generation to have grown up during the political reaction against legalised abortion, and it is also because we have no personal experience of the way things were before Roe.  People who can, rightly or wrongly, invoke memories of the “bad old days” when abortion was illegal, potentially unsafe and relatively rare are apparently more likely to sit on the fence or be strongly pro-abortion, while those of us who have grown up knowing the world in which abortion on demand remains, by and large, the reality will unsurprisingly be most inclined to view the status quo as unacceptable.  For us, references to those bad old days of the “back-alley clinics” have no meaning and seem almost irrelevant and they sound like the desperate excuse-making of people defending a despicable established practice because they are complicit in the practice at some level.  

On an ’08 note, it is interesting that Will was already profiling Brownback as a plausible ’08 contender in the summer of 2005.  The big-state shenanigans in the primaries may make it much harder for a Brownback to get traction, but if he does fare well in the early contests the insane February front-loading will benefit him.  He has been laying the groundwork for a successful insurgent campaign, and we will see the fruits of that preparation in the coming year.  It is still five months until Ames and Brownback is already beginning to make his mark in national polls.  I do not like Samnesty, but right now he appears to be the most credible challenger to the Terrible Trio.

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